This weekend, ten KOffice hackers congregated once again in the
hospitable Berlin KDAB headquarters. KOffice has come a long way in
six months: all the groundwork has been laid for the new version, KOffice 2.0. From
Krita to KPresenter, KWord to KSpread, KChart to Karbon, KPlato to Kexi, and from KFormula to Kivio, the big underlying frameworks are ready. This meeting was called to decide on common look
& feel issues and a release plan and schedule.

With an avalanche of last-minute commits, the KOffice Google Summer of Code students finished yet another great Summer of Code. We had some very exciting projects this year, and most of them were as great a success as last year. Read on for details of the achievements.

The KOffice team today released the third minor release of the 1.6 series. As the development focus has shifted to the next major release, this new version was aimed at polishing and fixing bugs. With this new version, three new languages are added to the list of translations: Bulgarian, Low Saxon and Nepali. You can read more about it in the full announcement. A full changelog is also available.

KOffice, the KDE office suite, has always stood behind the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as an industry standard. Now with KOffice 2.0 around the corner, with OpenOffice.org quickly becoming a new leader, and with Microsoft to release its own so-called "open" format, ODF and the interoperability that it promises is more important than ever.

The KOffice team today released KOffice 1.6.2, the second bug-fix release in their 1.6 series. Although this is a maintenance release, there are some new features in Krita (new filters and a smudge paint operation) and Kexi (a new User Mode to deploy Kexi applications). Many bugs were fixed, thanks to the helpful input of our users. We also have updated languages packs with no less than 4 new languages.

The KOffice team today released the first bug-fix release in their 1.6 series. Many bugs in Kexi and Krita as well as in most other components were fixed, thanks to the helpful input of our users. We also have updated languages packs. You can read more about it in the announcement, and the release notes.

With Krita's recent 1.6 release enhancing its usability for professional artwork, the Krita team is looking into creating a
gallery where Krita users can contribute their art made with it. Any decent gallery needs to be seeded with some initial artwork. So we are asking any
Krita user who might want to show his painting skills, to consider making us a pretty painting. With some luck, it'll get selected to be put on the site.

The KOffice team is proud to announce the 1.6.0 release of its office suite. This release is mostly a feature release of Krita and Kexi, but also contains major enhancements to the OpenDocument and MathML support of KFormula and new scripting functionality.

Yahoo Business reports on ODF Day at Akademy which brought together developers from KOffice, OpenOffice, IBM, Intel and government. "Dr. Barbara Held, presently serving as Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General of the European Commission Program for Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA), stated in her keynote address, 'In the view of the European administrations and Member States, the ODF standard is at the very top of the pile by far from all other proposed open standards.'"